ABSTRACT
This chapter provides effective healthcare to the whole person, and addresses the nature of personhood. The modern clinical model, as it emerged from the Enlightenment and the consequent development of the scientific method, diminished the importance of the whole person and narrowed the focus of medicine to an almost one-dimensional plane. The mental, emotional, social, and spiritual aspects of the person are seen as secondary to the physical pathology. The ultimate goal of healthcare should not be cure alone, but the healing of the whole person. The goal of the healer should be to work toward cure, within the context of healing. Health can be seen as involving these three major modalities: suffering, function, and coherence. Health is more than the absence of disease, and broader than the single dimension of suffering, then a healer's task is larger than the detection and eradication of a specific disease state.
